Archie's Dump

I won’t title this immediately, partially because I have no idea what I feel in the first place.

Several things have gone right since I last wrote in this screen, and several things have gone terribly wrong. It was during this time that I realized I am not a champion of change, nor do I take it on as well as I put on my resume. I’m a stubborn, hateful enemy of change, and I do everything in my power to fight it off.

These past few months have only been a testament to my bullheadedness. A mentor that I respect left work and now I’m left alone with someone who only cares about the profit of the company instead of the growth of the employee. I understand the change, and from the business standpoint, I applaud my newest leader for making that jump into that current position…but what does that mean for me?

It’s during this time that I found out that I’m not motivated by change, nor by wealth as I thought I did before. There’s a certain, undeveloped part of my brain that realized that I strive for purpose, and when I complete that purpose, that’s when I feel complete.

It shouldn’t come to a surprise to me, really. Thinking back, everything that I worked on, previous writing missions, previous jobs even, have always worked well for me because I believed in what the company wanted to accomplish–which all comes down to the affinity for non-profit organizations, I suppose.

Now, here I am in the job, mentor less, without a North star to guide me to our job’s true mission of creating educational programs and creating methods of interaction between scientific inquiry and the general public. I miss so much the translation of scientific lexicon and connecting them to human life, connecting them to each person individually. I miss, so much, the compassion between two people sharing a moment and cultivating a ground of vulnerability that no one expected.

It’s now where the reader might think that I’m better suited for a job in humanitarian discussion, maybe even politics to create those relationships–but with my bleeding heart and my stomach in my knees, I fear that the only vulnerability shown will be the pool of red around my own feet coming from the hallowed hole in my chest.

It’s not fair. It’s not fair that mission based companies aren’t taken as seriously as the ones that fish for profit. It’s not fair to me that I walk in between the hyphen of non and profit, it’s not fair that I have to choose between something that I care for and the livelihood of my own. But this is an exhausted narrative–I’m not the only one who suffers from capitalist gains earned from the tokened marginalized communities. If anything, I benefit from them, so to sit here and write about how unfair everything is would be hypocritical.

Yet, I sit at my desk and let my eyes wander far beyond my desk, far beyond the office in front of me that has the only window, and look into a clear sky, partly cloudy according to most weather reports, but all I see are fluffy white columns of harmless clouds.

I wonder, sometimes, what it would be like to carry on until the sky blue ends and I’m found with an unforgiving royal blue sky with bright lights that twinkle in amusement that I’ve made it as far as I had. They watch me in awe, that something that came of their being is staring back in turn, wondering how they too, can become something with flesh and bone and a bleeding heart that causes more harm than good. They too want to be, to feel, to help.

In the end I’ll reach out and close one eye, the corner crinkled up in gentle folds that remind me that I’m not everlasting, that I will soon return to what I once was, a bursting ball of bright light, only visible from eons and eons away.

In the meantime, I’ll laid down and listen to what the sky has to tell me while my scalp crawls with inspiration from what is under me.

We must teach ourselves, actively remind ourselves, what being wild means. We must make room for it and invite it back.

Brian Meier